Introducing the Flexible Curved OLED

Small-medium bendable-flexible OLED for portable devices

Because OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) displays need no backlight (LED, Cathode), it is going to be possible in the near future to produce very thin and highly flexible OLED Displays.

Completely new categories of products are going to become available in the next few years.
Please look at our detailed schematic graphic of a flexible OLED Panel.
The substrate of a flexible panel can be:

Plastic

Metal foil

flexible glass

Schematic of a flexible OLED Display

All these substrate types are very thin and so it is possible to make the display flexible or bendable.

These are the development and market entry stages:

very thin > 0.25mm, light, unbreakable

Bendable, ready for production (Galaxy Round, LG-Flex)

Rollable, completely flexible –> ready 2016

Printable, displays like a paper –> ready 2018-2020

Now that the first products are on the market we think that the manufacturer of flexible OLEDs has maintained its development goals: Samsung has introduced the Galaxy Round, and LG-Electronics introduced the LG-Flex as well as a smartphone with a bended display. But this is only the start of a market revolution. To get a good idea of the kind of products we can expect from these technological developments, please watch our exclusive video from Samsung Display.

UBI Research thinks that the market for flexible/bendable OLED Displays will be 700 million dollars in 2014, but 15 billion dollars by 2018!! IHS Display Bank, the global flexible display industry, will also see dramatic growth and become a USD 1.5 billion market by 2016 and exceed USD 10 billion by 2019!

At the moment we have two big players in at this market:

Samsung Display

Samsung Display is the world leader in AMOLED production and this Korean company will also want to ramp up the flexible/bendable market as soon as possible. Samsung Display employs a 5.5 Generation production line to produce these kinds of displays. As you see in the graphic they plan to ramp up production in the next few months.
Samsung Display also filed their own “YOUM” brand mark for flexible OLEDs

LG-Display

LG Display should be ready in three years to produce the flexible OLED for the LG G-Flex. LG use a plastic substrate. They apply a film-type encapsulation technology and attach the protection film to the back of the panel; this kind of panel is unbreakable and bendable.

LG also plans to ramp up the production lines in the next few years. LG think that 12 percent of all smartphones worldwide will be curved, flexible, and bendable in 2015, and by 2018 that figure will be more than 40 percent.

German News

OLED-Expert Erich Strasser

I’m a skilled web master/web designer, Microsoft certified systems administrator and have
been involved in online marketing for many years. One of the many special challenges
in my work for controlrooms GmbH was to set new standards in Formula 1.
Further on I’m running the internationally leading OLED information websites and
am therefore able to say that organic displays and lighting technologies are close to a
commercial breakthrough 20 years after discovery. Erich Strasser is the leading expert in organic light emitting diode since 2003.
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